The Grateful Dead - In The Dark - 180g LP

Product no.: MFSL1-369

The Grateful Dead - In The Dark - 180g LP
£34.95
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AAA 100% Analogue This LP was Remastered using Pure Analogue Components Only from the Master Tapes through to the Cutting Head

Mobile Fidelity - MFSL 1-369 - 180 Gram Virgin Vinyl - AAA 100% Analogue

Numbered Limited Edition - 821797136914 - Pressed at RTI  

Pure Analogue Mastered by Kreig Wunderlich from the Original Master tape

Half Speed Mastered on the Mobile Fidelity The Gain 2 Ultra Analog System

"If just as an example of the pinnacle of the analog rock and roll recording art, Mobile Fidelity's reissue of In The Dark is worth having." - Michael Fremer, analogplanet Music 9/10, Sound 11/10!

The Dead Will Survive: 1987 Album Gave Band New Lease on Life, Best Studio Effort in More Than a Decade In the Dark Contains “Touch of Grey”: Dead’s Only Top 40 Hit

Half-speed mastered from the original master tapes and part of the label’s unprecedented Grateful Dead reissue series, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered limited edition 180g LP of In the Dark presents the Dead’s long-overdue breakthrough in attention-grabbing fidelity. Even in an era in which the most revered artists succumbed to the day’s prevailing sound (namely, slick textures and artificial keyboard-heavy production that evoked the feel of Saran-Wrap) the band remained obstinate in its allegiance to revealing fidelity. As it happened, the Dead recorded most of the record live onstage at Marin Civic Auditorium using the then-newly introduced Dolby SR—a technology that permitted astounding instrumental separation, even when playing live. The group’s inimitable blend now sounds better, more immediate, and natural than ever.

Everything including the clip-clop of cowbells, Mickey Hart and Billy Kreutzmann’s rhythm-devil grooves, Phil Lesh’s supple bass lines, Garcia’s sweetened timbre, and Brent Mydland’s pastel-shaded keyboard melodies converges into a delightfully balanced, animate entity. The music possesses tube-like warmth and glow, and the band’s renewed vigor and, particularly, Garcia’s mellifluous guitar tones and rippling passages, come across with irresistible immediacy, heft, and vitality. Several effects—the revving of a motorcycle engine, which moves with precise imaging across an extremely wide soundstage and various synthesizer interjections among them—highlight lyrical turns and add winking humor. In the Dark is a late-'80s anomaly: A great and great-sounding rock album that isn’t the least bit dated.

While there’s no single secret behind the record’s success and its position as the greatest studio achievement of the Dead’s last two decades, In the Dark boils down to the essential ingredients of great songwriting and the kind of loose, spirited, frolicking chemistry that the sextet so often demonstrated onstage. Weir and Garcia engage in a friendly cynical “Hell In a Bucket” is one of the toughest, nastiest songs in the Dead’s catalog; “Throwing Stones,” his image-laden treaty on greed, politics, responsibility, and the environment, benefits from a complex arrangement sent up with marching bridges and spidery guitar work.

For his part, Garcia’s haunting slow blues “West L.A. Fadeaway” makes room for Weir’s skillful slide-guitar fills while the poignant, merciful reflection “Black Muddy River”—dressed in gospel gowns and Biblical allusions—completes the circle the Dead began back in the late 1960s when the group ended its marathon shows with the traditional spiritual “And We Bid You Good Night.” The white-bearded legend clearly has fun throughout, and, obviously energized by a second chance on life, pours his soul into the music.

Mydland’s performance and presence aren't to be overlooked. Equipped with the vocal harmony potential of a choir of angels, his poignant backing singing on “Black Muddy River” aches with beauty. Similarly evocative, his lead on the hobo country-blues “Tons of Steel” evokes equal parts move-on sympathy and regrettable loss. It can be strongly argued that his piano lines and right-hand fills throughout constitute the most valuable the Dead ever received on a record. Chalk them up to an integral part of an album on which every star aligned, good fortune prevailed, and the Dead finally achieved the widespread recognition it had long been overdue.

The prototypical portrait of final-era Grateful Dead, In the Dark belongs in every record collection.

Mastered by Krieg Wunderlich at Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, Sebastopol, California on The Gain 2 Ultra Analog System.

"The original pressing was mastered DMM, uncredited, at Masterdisk. And that sounded great. But this Mobile Fidelity reissue is much better. Much better. It loses none of the original's spaciousness and transient clarity while sounding richer, fuller, more, dynamic, more three dimensional and depth-charged on bottom. The transient dynamic accents will have you jumping out of your skin if not your seat." 

"If just as an example of the pinnacle of the analog rock and roll recording art, Mobile Fidelity's reissue of In The Dark is worth having." 
- Michael Fremer, analogplanet.com, Music 9/10, Sound 11/10!

• Numbered, Limited Edition
• Half-Speed Production and Mastering by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab
• Specially Plated and Pressed on 180 grams of High Definition Vinyl
• Special Static Free - Dust Free Inner Sleeve
• Heavy Duty Protective Packaging
• Mastered from the Original Master Tapes
• Gatefold Jacket

Selections:
Side One:

1. Touch of Grey
2. Hell In A Bucket
3. When Push Comes To Shove
4. West L.A. Fadeaway
Side Two:
1. Tons Of Steel
2. Throwing Stones
3. Black Muddy River

Grateful Dead - In The Dark - 180g LP

 

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GAIN 2 Ultra Analog™ is a proprietary cutting system built and designed by legendary design genius Tim De Paravicini, with consultation from one of MFSL’s founding fathers – Stan Ricker, an audio engineer responsible for many of MFSL’s most heralded past releases.

The GAIN 2 Ultra Analog™ system is comprised of a Studer™ tape machine with customized reproduction electronics* and handcrafted cutting amps that drive an Ortofon cutting head on a restored Neumann VMS-70 lathe. (*It is worth noting that independent studies have confirmed that the GAIN 2 Ultra Analog™ system can unveil sonic information all the way up to 122kHz!)

First and foremost, we only utilize first generation original master recordings as source material for our releases. We then play back master tapes at half speed enabling the GAIN 2 Ultra Analog™ system to fully extract the master’s sonic information. Our lacquers are then plated in a specialized process that protects transients in the musical signal. (Due to this process, there may be occasional pops or ticks inherent in initial play back, but as the disc is played more, a high quality stylus will actually polish the grooves and improve the sound). We further ensure optimum sound quality by strictly limiting the number of pressings printed for each release. These limited editions, in addition to being collectors’ items, ensure that the quality of the last pressing matches the quality of the first.

As you can imagine, all these efforts involve a tremendous amount of time, technology, cost and effort. The introduction of GAIN 2 Ultra Analog™ maintains Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab’s position as the world’s leading audiophile record label, where a passion for music with extraordinary sound quality matters most.

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